


Worth Waiting For

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Home and Away [6]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 17:41:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7232311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate Atlantis, Evan Lorne/Clone!Jack, worth waiting for."</p><p>Evan isn't sure if he was worth waiting for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worth Waiting For

When Evan arrived at Sheila’s booth on Saturday morning, there was a box waiting for him. He didn't recognize the handwriting - textbook schoolteacher cursive - but it had his name on it. Probably something from Sheila that she’d asked one of her assistants to have ready for him. Evan set it aside, then went about setting up the booth for the day. If he was going to take the eight-day journey on the Daedalus to get home and then only have two weeks on Earth before he had to ship back out to Atlantis, he wanted to do as little traveling as possible while he was Earthside, so he was crashing in the Atlantis Bachelor Pad, an apartment one of the SGC minions had set aside as off-base accommodations for any Atlantis Expedition members who didn’t otherwise have someplace to stay. Every day he walked to the park where the summer Art Festival was being held.

He was, ostensibly, helping Sheila promote her gallery by selling smaller prints by her featured artists (him included), but he was picking up a little cash by doing portraits on the spot and, if someone knew to ask, the occasional henna tattoo. Mostly he was enjoying the opportunity to relax and imagine, for the time being, that the Wraith didn’t exist and he wasn’t in mortal peril every time an alarm went off. (Sometimes it wasn’t the Wraith. Sometimes it was one of Rodney and Zelenka’s experiments. Most days, everyone on Atlantis was safer when they were screaming at each other instead of working together.)

Once Evan had arranged the artwork that was for sale so it was displayed neatly (they packed it away every night to avoid damage or theft), he settled back on his stool with his sketchbook and drew idly. His mother and sister and niece and nephew were flying into to see him for a couple of days, since the kids were out of school and Natalia wanted to see how her new apprentice handled the shop without her. Evan was looking forward to spending time with them. Even though he had The Gene, he hadn’t wanted to risk a one-way trip to another galaxy, not with his family back here and unaware of the dangers out there (and the plans and backup plans he had in place in case of a foothold situation gone awry).

Sheila arrived with the cash box, windblown and grinning. “Look at you, all bright and early!”

“I have an inner alarm clock non-pareil,” Evan said, which was a bit of an understatement. He'd joined up when he was eighteen, had almost done his twenty years in the Air Force. That many years with the same wake-up time was hard to undo for a fortnight’s libo.

Sheila smiled at him. She showed him the key to the cash box, reminded him of the number to call when he was running low on change, showed him how to use the credit card machine, and she reiterated her firm no-check policy.

“Oh hey, you’re sketching. Can I see?” Sheila’s eyes lit up.

Evan smiled. “Sure.” He held out his sketchbook, and she skirted around the table to take it, and her foot nudged the box Evan had set aside.

“What’s this?” She frowned down at it.

Evan raised his eyebrows. “You didn’t leave it for me?”

Sheila shook her head and picked the box up. “No. I don't recognize the handwriting, though. Reminds me of my grandma’s.”

“It was here when I got here. I assumed it was from you.” Evan took the box from her carefully, inspecting it. He listened to it, which made Sheila raise her eyebrows, but he’d learned to be cautious. He even poked at it with his mind, in case it had Ancient tech in it, but by all appearances it was an ordinary shoe box wrapped in brown paper. “How would anyone know I was here?”

“A couple of people stopped by and looked at your stuff and I told them you’d be here in person if they wanted to meet you,” Sheila said. “But no one besides me knows your last name.”

Evan traced his fingers over the curling letters on the top of the box, _Evan Lorne._ And then he knew.

“Did Jonathan come by yesterday?”

“He helped me yesterday,” Sheila said, and then she raised her eyebrows. “Oh. You think he left that for you?”

Evan’s throat closed. The box was big enough to hold the box of rings and some of the books he’d sent to Jonathan. He’d thought, with the new sketchbook Jonathan had sent him, that they were on the same page, but what if Evan had demanded too much, waited too long? But he fished his knife out of his pocket and sliced through the wrapping paper, and he was right, it was just an ordinary shoe box.

He lifted the lid - and stared. There was a pile of letters inside the box, tied with a black satin ribbon. The first letter on top was folded and secured with a wax seal. Evan slid it out from beneath the ribbon and broke the seal - oh hell, it looked like a Stargate - with careful hands.

The page was filled with the same perfect schoolteacher cursive. The letter began _Dear Evan_ and was friendly enough, casual enough that no one would know. But Evan read the intense discussion about _The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe_ and how the Pevensie children must have felt so robbed when they stumbled out of the closet and were children again, not kings and queens, and what of the loved ones they’d left behind?

Loved ones.

He had to bite down on his own lip so he didn’t smile like an idiot.

“Well?” Sheila asked.

Evan re-folded the letter and put it back in the box.

“What is it?

“Something I’ve been waiting for for a long time.”

“Was it worth the wait?” Sheila asked.

“Every second.”


End file.
